Actors’ next stop: Boston!

Sunday, February 24, 2013 -- Anonymous (not verified)

Sections:

The Inside Track

Monday, February 25, 2013

Author(s):

Gayle Fee

The Oscars are over but Boston is about to be overrun with Academy Award winners and nominees when “The Fighter” director David O. Russell starts filming his “Untitled Abscam Project” in the next few weeks.

Russell, who was nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for “Silver Linings Playbook” (not to mention his Best Director nod for “The Fighter” back in 2010), is bringing Oscar winner Christian Bale back to town for the set-in-the-swinging-’70s pic.

Also along for the ride are last night’s Best Actress Oscar winner, Jennifer Lawrence, four-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams, double Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner and Best Actor nominee Bradley Cooper.

That’s about a billion dollars’ worth of Hollywood talent!

The flick is the based-on-fact tale of a 1970s FBI sting operation where the bureau hired a known con artist to pose as an Arab businessman and expose political corruption.

Russell’s flick, which will take some artistic license with the facts, stars Bale as the con man who is teamed up with an out-of-control federal agent (played by Cooper). Adams plays Bale’s girlfriend/partner in crime, while Lawrence will play his wife.

Renner, last in Boston to film Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” will play a maverick New Jersey mayor ensnared in the sting.

In real life, the Abscam sting led to the conviction of New Jersey U.S. Sen. Pete Williams, five congressmen, a member of the New Jersey state Senate, a gaggle of Philadelphia city councilors and an immigration officer.

The flick is set in the late ’70s and early ’80s and follows on the heels of Affleck’s success with last night’s Best Picture Oscar winner, the ’70s-set political thriller “Argo.”